Happy New Year

As we say goodbye to another year, I would like to wish everyone a prosperous, blessed, and joy-filled new year. Today we say goodbye, reflect on what the past year has brought us, and looking forward to another year. I am hoping that 2015 will be revolutionary with regards to my personal life, family, work, and our world. 2014 was a year like no other, but that is the case with every year I can remember. Some of us got married, some of us got divorced, some of us had to deal with loss, while others among us celebrated new life, some of us got new jobs, some of us lost jobs, some of us moved into new homes, some of us had no significant change to our life status whatsoever. Whatever happened in 2014, it is a part of our past, and each new day brings us hope of a new future in front of us, and I hope that 2015 helps us recognize that.

So many of us make resolutions this time of year, but I am burned out on resolution making, because they don’t work for me if they aren’t specific enough, or aren’t detailed in how I am going to go about accomplishing them. If you believe what they say on the news every single year people tend to make resolutions toward getting in shape, (hence the boom in gym memberships at the beginning of the year); losing weight, (the number of weight watchers, nutrisystem, jenny craig commercials has gone up tenfold this week); or improving their money management. In Christian circles, we also see a lot of people wanting to pray more, or read their Bibles more frequently.

At the beginning of the year we are filled with so much hope and vision for a promising new beginning, but as soon as we stumble off the track toward becoming our new selves, we fall back into the same routines. I remember writing this last year, and I write it again this year because I need the refresher course, and I need to embrace not only the pursuit of long term goal setting, but also the grace when I begin to head in the wrong direction, and need to remind myself of the promise and hope that came at the beginning of the year. (Maybe I will set this post to come up on my feed every two weeks as a reminder of what I said as 2014 wrapped up.)

One way I think we can combat the resolution making fatigue is long term goal setting. Last year I set for myself a goal to run 1700 miles, and somewhere in June I realized that training for two marathons was going to take me past that mark in late October, so I revised my goal at that point to 2000 miles. As of my last run of 2014, I have run just over 2015 miles this year. Those type of goals, for me, are easy to realize and track throughout the year. However, I learned in the process of setting this goal that I was too conservative in my goal setting, and realized I needed to adjust midstream. Sometimes, however, our goal setting might be too ambitious and we need to give ourselves enough grace to modify them midstream.

This year I encourage you to set some goals for yourself, and if you need to adjust them at the midpoint, feel free to do so. I am setting some goals for myself and will list them below to give you an idea of my goals for the year.

I want to use 2015 to run 1500 miles, swim 150 miles, and bike 2000 miles.

I want to use 2015 to write a short book for my kids at Christmas time, and begin work on my first book.

I want to use 2015 to write my wife a love note once a week.

I want to use 2015 to spend at least 15 minutes in quiet solitude each morning before I go exercise.

As you see above three of my goals have measurable statistics that I can easily modify, and three are behavior modifications toward helping me become a better man, husband, and father. Maybe you think I went to far, or maybe you don’t think I am stretching myself enough, but I think this is what it will take to create a revolution in my behavior, and after that I give it to God to actually do the changing in my heart.

With all of that said, I want to wish you all the happiest 2015, and may we all accomplish our goals toward further sanctification in the new year.